I have to go back a day because this was yesterday's note, so the meditation was actually the one that I did I guess two days ago...I have to remember what it was. At any rate maybe we won't worry what it was, because I didn't use a phrase in that meditation, I said for you to reflect on it yourself. When we think of the wishing of compassion and Lovingkindness, some people do find it very hard to do, some people do find it quite easy, it is relative according to people's personality and conditioning. If a person stays strongly on the compassion side, it will get heavy, it will feel difficult. If a person stays too much on the lovingkind side it will get too easy, in a sense, and get too high, too light.
So what we would like to do in the basic wish is to have it balanced. That is, we are going to identify with people's pain, difficulty, Dukkha, whatever, and we are going to identify with our own, but we don't want to be weighed down by it. We don't just want to identify with the Dukkha and have it so hard that we feel it is overwhelming. But in the same sense we are not going to just overlook the Dukkha and just think "oh well, may everyone be happy, may they be happy, may I be happy." We are not going to go on that side either.
We want a balance on this, so it is not difficult to do, but it is not super easy that it actually has no meaning. When we think about the wish in the basic practice itself, we bring the person to mind, we think a little of their Dukkha, we give them a wish. I mentioned the other day that the sincerity behind the wish was important. To actually truly believe that we feel there is a way out of mental Dukkha, and to wish that this person will get to the way out. So there is a lightness, there is an energy, there is a non-heaviness in the thought of Lovingkindness. But the Compassion identifies that the world does have its heaviness, it is there, but we don't have to suffer with it. We can feel for it, but not suffer with the heaviness.
Now, I might sideline on this and give you an example that it is fairly clear to see that Compassion and Lovingkindness itself, when actually put into practice, is not difficult to do, it is not heavy and it is not light. Imagine, right down on the walking tracks that some kid is riding around on their bicycle, zoom, zoom, having a nice time, ten years old. And then all of a sudden they fall down and they scrape their knee, and they start crying. Now it is probable that all of you here, or if not at least most of you, had a bicycle as a kid, or you fell down at other times playing and you scraped your knee. And you got over it, like all little kids do, and it is no big deal.
But this little ten year old is very new at this, and they fell down and cut their knee and they are crying a lot. Imagine that you are the only adult in the whole place, you are just standing at the steps, you are the only adult and you see the kid crying. Would you stand there and cry? No, not usually. Would you stand there and laugh? Hopefully not. A mature adult would see the kid crying, feel with the Dukkha of the kid, identify with it, and immediately go down to help the kid because the adult knows how to fix the problem. So their Compassion and Lovingkindness is actually quite strong, they go down and help the kid, but there is no heaviness and it is not super light either. There is a clarity, there is a strength. That is a level of Compassion and Lovingkindness we would like to go towards, in a balance, a strong balance.